While it’s been rumored for some time that Google (News - Alert) was keen to buy some technology patents, today it’s official. Google has reportedly purchased more than 1,000 technology patents from IBM.

The news was broken by the technology blog SEO by the Sea, which writes that in mid-July, Google recorded the assignment of 1,030 granted patents from IBM (News - Alert). The patents are all technology-focused and cover a range of topics, from the fabrication and architecture of memory and micro-processing chips, to other areas of computer architecture including servers and routers as well. A number of the patents also cover relational databases, object oriented programming, and a wide array of business processes, said SEO by the Sea. (You can see a full list of the technologies involved on their blog.)

The technology world had been abuzz with the fact that Google wanted to expand its portfolio of patents in an effort to get sued for intellectual property infringement less. (The company has a number of outstanding lawsuits against it, including one for its phenomenally successful Android (News - Alert) mobile operating system.) Kent Walker, the company’s senior vice president and general counsel admitted this patent purchase strategy on the company’s Patents & Innovation blog back in the spring.

To this end, in April of this year, Google bid about $900 million in an attempt to purchase patents from defunct Canadian tech company Nortel. Google lost that bid to a consortium of its competitors, including Apple, Microsoft, Research in Motion, Ericsson, Sony, and EMC (News - Alert), who pooled their cash and laid out $4.5 billion for the patents: many times more what Google had tried to spend on the intellectual property.

Even with the IBM patent acquisition, Google may not be finished filling out its parent portfolio. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the search giant has been in talks to buy InterDigial Inc., a company that owns thousands of patents and licenses them but doesn’t create products, said the WSJ’s sources. The acquisition, if successful, would cost several billion dollars.

Luckily, that’s pocket change to Google.

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